In the film, John Patterson (Richard Kiley) is depicted as supportive of African-American Zeke Ward (James Edwards) and his family. In real life, following his term as Alabama attorney general (1954-58), Patterson ran for governor in 1958 in an openly racist campaign and won. One of his opponents, George Wallace, had run as a racial moderate and told his friends after the election, "John Patterson out-niggered me, and I'm never gonna be out-niggered again." Four years later, in 1962, Wallace won the governorship of Alabama as an avowed segregationist.
The film went into production so quickly that some of the criminals it was portraying were standing trial while filming was taking place.
The scene where the little black child was murdered and thrown onto the Patterson's lawn never occurred. It was added for dramatic effect.
Such was director Phil Karlson's attention to detail that he had some of his actors wear the real clothes of their screen counterparts.